Erasure-cooling, control, and hyper-entanglement of motion in optical tweezers

We experimentally demonstrate how quantized motional degrees of freedom in optical tweezers can be used as quantum information carriers. By converting motional excitations into erasure errors and removing them, we can prepare atoms into motional ground state with close to 99% efficiency. This cooling mechanism, erasure-cooling, is the first step in coherent manipulation of motional states. With this, we can perform mid-circuit readout of certain optical qubits while shelving other qubits into motional superposition states. In parallel, with Rydberg gates, we entangle the motion of two atoms in separate tweezers and generate hyper-entanglement, a simultaneous Bell state of motional and optical qubits. With multiple concrete examples, this work shows how controlling motion enriches the toolbox of quantum information processing with neutral atoms, opening up unique prospects for metrology enhanced by mid-circuit readout and a large class of quantum operations enabled via hyper-entanglement.